Don't Hate Her When She Gets Up to Leave
by Kyndeyrn
Summary: It's the middle of the night when she wakes up, confronted with the kind of darkness the presses against her eyes, makes her wonder who she was during the day.
1. Don't Hate Her When She Gets Up to Leave

Warnings: I use the word "hell" once. Whoops, guess I just used it again.

A/N: Not entirely sure where this story came from. Just been watching excessive amounts of Parks and Rec lately. Guess it takes place in one of the earlier seasons, but even that doesn't really matter. Interpret it however you want. Oh yeah, the title comes from Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2".

Don't Hate Her When She Gets Up to Leave

It's the middle of the night when she wakes up, confronted with the kind of darkness the presses against her eyes, makes her wonder who she was during the day. She scrubs the darkness from them and they slowly adjust to the glare of the streetlight shining through her window. It paints the walls and the carpet the dim shade of orange that has always made her feel uncomfortable.

It's 3:00 in the morning, 3:02 to be exact, and she is alone. She sits up and cracks her knuckles, running long fingers through disheveled hair. There's no reason to be awake, none at all. Without knowing entirely why, she gets up and begins to dress. She puts on her jeans first, then a button up shirt – black, and a pair of sneakers.

It's dark outside, and damp. A slight chill has settled over the town and she has forgotten to put in her contacts. The night is bitter and blurry and she feels anywhere but home. She wanders through the streets, paying little attention to where she is going. She'll get there. She knows she will. The occasional car drifts past her, headlights glaring in the dark like an alarm bell of light. Her body tenses whenever one approaches, but they never slow or stop. They keep right on driving, cold and unfeeling as the night.

The first thing she notices as she approaches the house is that a light is on in the kitchen. She freezes. Should she turn back? She wants to, that is, she knows she should, but something draws her forward, enticing her toward the edge of the pit that borders the house. She'll only stay for a little while. Just until she feels tired again.

She sits down on the hard dirt, her legs dangling over the edge of the pit. It seems, for a moment, as if the world is composed of cold, distant earth and even colder, more distant sky. Orange streetlamps. Fluorescent stars. And a bitter, unnatural dampness that encompasses it all. She wrenches a rock from the earth next to her and lobs it into the pit, then another one. She can't hear them land, but she likes to pretend that a muffled thump greets her ears. She likes to pretend that she makes the slightest difference in the order of the universe.

She is so caught up in her actions that she doesn't notice a rectangle of yellow light appear on the house where a solid wooden door once stood. She does not notice the sound of footsteps approaching from behind her. She does not notice a presence hovering beside her next to the pit. She does not notice until –

"April?"

She jumps at the sound of her name, and swivels her head around to locate the source of the noise. Another woman, only a few years older than herself, stands a few feet away, half-cloaked by the shadows. The woman is not looking at her; she too is staring down into the depths of the pit, into the darkness that mirrors the sky. "Ann," the younger girl responds, "What are you doing here?"

"Are you serious, April? I live here."

"You live in a pit? That's pretty lame." April scoffs, and then goes back to uprooting rocks. Her insomnia has begun to lessen and she feels tired and irate.

Ann sighs, but can think of nothing to say. She imagines the rock screaming as it plummets to the bottom of the pit. April imagines it thumping as it hits bottom. It's late.

"Do you want to come inside?" Ann asks after a while. She's not sure why she asks it, but she doesn't regret it. She hadn't been sleeping anyway. How could she?

"Inside your pit?" April jokes, but the edge of malice is gone from her voice. She just sounds very, very tired. "Sure." She gets up, dusts herself off, and follows the other woman into the rectangle of yellow light.

Upon entering the other woman's house, April finds herself in a clean, well-lighted kitchen. She sits down at the wooden table and stares moodily at her nails, waiting for something to happen. Or for nothing to happen. Ann enters the room on her heels, but pauses in the doorway. Now that she has her here, she's unsure what to do about it. "Tea?" Ann asks, crossing over to the stove upon which rests an old metal teapot.

"Got coffee?" The younger woman asks without looking up from her nails.

"Isn't is a bit late for that?"

April glances up briefly, casting Ann a sardonic look that makes her want to bite the inside of her cheek, "Were you planning on sleeping?" She stares pointedly at the digital clock on the stove which brightly displays 3:46 in green numerals.

Ann begins preparing the coffee. She does not sit while it is percolating and the two do not speak. However, when the coffeemaker beeps, (three times, a high pitched trill) she pours two cups and takes a seat next to the other girl.

"Want to tell me what you're doing in front of my house at three in the morning?"Ann asks finally, taking a sip of the steaming black substance.

"I didn't know this was your house." April stares into her mug, trying to avoid seeing her own face reflected in the drink.

"Uh-huh." The brunette stares at the other levelly.

"Alright, sometimes I just come here at night." The confession is muttered into scalding liquid and holds an essence of catharsis at this late hour.

Ann does not press the issue. Part of her understands, Unfortunately, it is the part of her that the rest of her rarely understands.

"How about you? Why are you up?" April can't help the questions from pouring off her tongue and she takes a deep gulp of coffee to shut herself up.

"Late shift at the hospital." Ann explains.

"It's Tuesday."

"So?"

"You don't work Tuesday nights." Again April finds herself speaking when she wishes she could remain silent.

"How do you –?" Ann begins.

"I just know, okay?"

Ann sips her coffee to cover up the awkward silence that follows April's pronouncement. Noises blur the air around them: the kitchen light buzzes, the air conditioning whirs, and outside, cars pass on the street, the drivers absorbed in their own worlds of smooth jazz radio, late night roads, and ever expanding pools of light before them. It crosses Ann's mind that she should feel uncomfortable. She should feel curious. Hell, she should feel anything other than the deep sadness that has begun to creep inside her with the coffee. A million questions rush through her mind, but none seem appropriate. Finally, she decides on one. One of them must say something after all, "April, is there anything you want to tell me?"

For a moment, April says nothing. She just lets her long fingers run up and down the ceramic handle of the coffee mug before taking another sip of its contents. At last, she looks up and, with her brows furrowed and her head cocked slightly to the left, she stares directly at Ann. And suddenly Ann understands why she feels so sad.

It would be a lie to state that moments like this are turning points, to suggest that they could stem off in a thousand different directions. Moments like this only end one way. And it is never they way they are supposed to.

"I better get going. Thanks for the coffee." April is already halfway across the kitchen by the time the sentence is out of her mouth. Ann barely has time to follow her to the door before the other girl is absorbed by the night. The cars pass on the road by her house and it strikes her how lonely they must be.

April is not remotely tired when she finally returns home. She sprawls out on her bed, still fully clothed, and stares at the ceiling. Slowly the world around her begins to grow brighter with gray light of dawn.


	2. Incidentally, I Never Got to Montana

**A/N: **Originally, this chapter was going to be another one-shot (hence why it's written in a different tense from the previous one), but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the two were in the same universe (albeit, a fairly alternate one). So, what I'm kinda thinking of doing with this story is presenting a series of April/Ann incidents that may seem a bit disjointed at first, but will hopefully cohere eventually. (Sorta like what Ezra Pound tried to do with his Cantos. Yes, I did just liken myself to Ezra Pound (minus, of course, his fascist anti-Semitic tendencies) in terms of April/Ann Parks and Rec fanfiction. No shame. Okay, maybe a little.) Anyhow, we'll see where it goes. If anywhere. It'll be exciting. Or something. I promise.

**Warnings: **the inclusion of a substance that could very likely be alcy, some mild language, a tad bit AU, perhaps a some OOCness, aaaand we may be heading in a femslashy direction

Incidentally, I Never Got to Montana

She had a look on her face like she didn't know where she was. And maybe she didn't. Clutching that plastic cup like it was the only thing between her and the pits of Hell or something worse. Something like Heaven. She was a different version of lonely tonight. That empty, dizzying feeling - the one you get when you've had a drink too many. And maybe she had. Or maybe she just wished it.

When you're alone in a forest in southern Indiana you might as well be nowhere at all. And April was nowhere.

"Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere," she whispered it into the night and it emerged shrouded in a white fog. "Nowhere, nowhere…" The words ran together, sticking to one another oddly as if bound incorrectly by some intangible adhesive. "Nowhere, no where, now here." She took a gulp of whatever was in the cup, drowning her whispers in icy fluid. What are the use of words at a time when there is nothing to say?

It was snowing and she knew this even though it was dark and she was numb with cold and her version of loneliness. She tried to forget the snow. Tried to forget that it was falling, even as it made contact with her hair, her skin, her clothes. But it wasn't easy and she had to think of something more than darkness.

She wasn't sure if she was sitting or standing, but when she tried to take a drink and felt something that tingled with a perplexing warmth cascade over her cheeks she became aware that she was lying down. She let her arm fall to the ground at her side. And the cup grew heavy with snow. And she was blind to it all.

Light does not often penetrate the darkness of nowhere or the forests of southern Indiana and so, when April saw it, she assumed, and reasonably so, that she had finally forgotten the snow. However, when she became aware of a second light accompanying the first, she knew she must be mistaken. A steady crunch and the sound of machinery. A scene change brought on by the shifting of lights and an entrance. Cue the violins and forget the music.

"April?" A softer, more frantic crunching than before. An unsteady rhythm that flowed under the shouted word. The shouted name. Her name. She must be somewhere now. She must be here now.

April sat up and the blood rushed to her head, bubbling in a way that was not quite pleasant. Her voice came out loud and abrupt and this surprised her, "Ann." And the white mist cloaked the name and she wished it wouldn't. She really wished it wouldn't.

The footsteps stopped and a dark figure swam into view, silhouetted by the light pouring from the headlights of the still running car. She could see the snow too, falling in and out of the light – translucent flakes of crystallized cloud. "April…" the word, the name, her name, came in a softer tone now, quite unlike the panicked shout of the prior moment, "Are you okay? Are you…drunk?" The last question was edged with discordant disappointment and April wanted to flinch away when she heard it.

She sat up, brushing snow from herself with fingers red and raw. The cup still sat on the earth beside her, gathering snow like a grail filled with unholy liquid – a beacon of some unrecognizable significance, stretching across all of time vicariously through the length of its shadow, which blended smoothly into those patterning the forest floor. "I'm fine." She stood up and her vision instantly blurred, but she kept her footing and stared levelly at her rescuer. The word sounded inapplicable, ridiculous even, when she rolled it about her mind. Everyone needs rescuing.

April closed her eyes, shutting out the light and Ann and thoughts of rescue. Everything was dark for a while – seconds, minutes perhaps, hours, or other illogical, nonsensical methods of measuring how many times a pair of hearts beat in a series of instants. When she opened them again she felt warmer and she wondered if she was being embraced by Ann or the snow. However, when she moved to return or recoil from the gesture (she had not yet decided which), she found that she was held by only a thick winter coat. It was warm. The artificial, residual warmth of a someone whose arms were not around her.

"How long have you been out here?" The question was direct and it caused April to swim out of her thoughts, thoughts that itched and stung the back of her mind. She looked at Ann and saw that she was shivering now due to the absence of her coat. She wasn't sure how this made her feel. She didn't care to feel anything at all about it. So she didn't.

"Wow Ann, you look like a real idiot coming all the way out here in nothing but that sweater," the words came out slowly and without any real conviction, but they successfully served to evade the pointed question.

Ann sighed and took a step closer to April and this made her distinctly uncomfortable. The kind of discomfort that isn't exactly unpleasant, but engulfs you when you don't expect it – when you see the sun shining on the mountains and it makes you think of something that you haven't remembered in a long, long time. She wanted to step back, look down, run away, but she couldn't. Maybe she didn't actually want to. So she stood and watched and waited and thought about hoping, but she wasn't sure for what.

And Ann took her hands, her cold, cold hands, in her own and April wondered briefly what it would be like if she could feel it, but she couldn't and she didn't bother trying. And after a moment Ann let go with muttered declarations that she was reasonably sure that April would be okay, and for the first time April knew what it meant to miss a moment of her own life.

"Get in the car, April; I'm taking you home." Ann was already walking towards the vehicle with an air of assurance that April would follow. And she did. Of course she did. And she wondered what Ann's eyes had looked like while she was holding her hands.

The car was warm and within a few minutes the tips of April's fingers had begun to tingle, but her mind was still clouded by white mist shot through with the golden notes of the late night jazz that issued from the radio. She spoke without thinking, as if she were in a dream, as if she were sailing on clouds of gold and rain and something that could not quite be pinned down with words, "Ann…how did you know I was here?" Slow words. Sticky words.

"Don't ask me things like that, April." She couldn't tell if Ann was upset or cold or tired or something else entirely. How could she when Ann herself wasn't sure?

"Come on. You knew. How? I didn't even know where I was. Still don't." Do any of us? The words were half mumbled and she wasn't sure when she had stopped speaking and started thinking.

A sigh followed by a vague and cloudy and wholly unsatisfying confession, "I just knew, okay?"

A pause. "Why?"

"Because…because it's where I would be if…" Ann trailed off.

"If what?"

"Oh God, I don't know April…if I were younger, if I were stupider, if I followed my thoughts without really thinking."

April didn't respond and Ann figured that a combination of alcohol, exhaustion, and the warmth of the car had finally knocked her out. Good. It was better that way.

Time passed with the rushing of headlights on dirt, gasps of gold that didn't shine, before April spoke again, "Let's go to Montana, Ann. Let's go to Montana." She said it methodically, as if she were nodding in and out of sleep, but with a touch of something that sounded like purpose.

"Montana?" Ann asked, distracted by the snow and the darkness and the driving and the absurdity of it all.

"Yeah, Montana. They get it there."

"They get what there?"

"Damned if I know, but they do. They get it there. Let's go to Montana, Ann. Let's go to Montana."

"We can't go to Montana. I've got to get you home."

"You don't get it Ann. You just don't get it." She said it in the same steady tone, not angry – just lost in the snow.

There was silence and Ann thought that would be the end of it all. She could already feel the sting of dying potential, but the potential for what she did not know. She didn't like the feeling and she liked even less the uncertainty of it. But she didn't quite hate it. There was something about it that she clung on to. Longed for even. She tried not to dwell on it. It made her hope.

And then, "Let's go to Jack-In-The-Box, Ann. I want a milkshake." April wondered if she was asleep when she said this. It seemed rather stupid. But true nonetheless.

Ann laughed, a tight worried sound, but with something warm beneath it. Something she didn't like to think about, "A milkshake? You were freezing to death ten minutes ago and now you want a milkshake?"

"Yeah, let's go to Jack-In-The-Box, Ann. The one by my house."

Now it was her turn to pause and question, "Why?"

"I want to pretend."

"Pretend what?"

"I want to pretend that we're from somewhere else. And we're driving through. We're just driving through Indiana. We're not going there or anything. We're just driving through. And we see that Jack-In-The-Box while we're driving and we decide that we want to stop for milkshakes. I want to pretend that, Ann. I just want to pretend that."

"So where are we going to?"

"Montana."

"Uh-huh. And where are we coming from?"

"Montana."

Ann let out another harsh, unintentional laugh at this answer. She wasn't sure how to respond. Or whether to respond at all. Part of her wanted to know why April was out here in the first place, but most of her didn't so she chose not to ask. She chose to respond. "April…?" she said and she said it softly.

April mumbled something that sounded like "Yeah?"

"April," Ann repeated. Like she liked the way it sounded. Or maybe she was just having doubts. Either way she repeated it once more before pressing forward. "April…why are we driving anywhere at all? Not now, I mean, but to and from Montana by way of Indiana. Why you and me?"

"You were the one who agreed to come along." It seemed like the only response for such a question.

April wasn't so numb anymore. She wasn't so tired either. She wasn't sure what she was. Even when the headlights of Ann's car washed over the front of her house she wasn't sure if she was home. She got out of the car and didn't thank Ann for the ride. Some nights, snow isn't the only thing you want to forget.

The passenger door closed and Ann was alone, save for the radio and memories of recent conversation.

And where there were once words, she now heard music.


	3. Caution, Baby, Caution

**A/N:** So I figured I'd fiddle around with Ann's character a bit, nail down some disillusionment. I guess this is a drabble of sorts – me just playing around with language and such. It still fits within the context of the story, but I suppose it's a bit later on in the overall timeframe. As I said, though, I'll mostly just be jumping around time wise, seeing if everything falls into place.

**Warnings: **Angst and flowery prose.

Caution, Baby, Caution, Don't Dream Too Far Away

It was the smell of coffee that hit her hard as she stumbled through the lobby. That sterile, too clean smell of hospital coffee, watered down by rules, regulations, litigations and other structured methods of organizing these messy, unorthodox human animals into neat little boxes labeled YES or NO. It was this coffee that complimented geometric stacks of forms, headed by blocks of harsh, militaristic lettering, which ordered frazzled, sleepless patients to fill out lines of barely comprehensible jargon with ballpoint pens that traced crude canals in the white pages: indents flecked with miniscule dots of black ink – rotten, ugly scratches in this neat fluorescent world. This – this! – is what she had built herself up to. This world, which no amount of flipping through highlighter and Red Bull stained textbooks, her veins pumping in a frenzied tango to the beat of Adderall in a dark dorm room under the white hot spot light of a desk lamp, could prepare her for. Not for the dried up pens and rigid forms. Not for the coffee.

The lobby passed by in a tired, fevered blur and she was facing the glass doors, those perfect, crystalline glass doors, which whisked back and forth on their tracks to the sound of a mechanical breeze. She looked at them every day and, though she tried not to, she always found smudges on them. She'd walk. Sixteen blocks. The sky (a pale gray mass stretched above her, illuminated from behind and shot through with streaks of red like an infection) looked ready to break, to burst, to release with pain and relief a torrent of snow that would cocoon the world, or southern Indiana which, essentially, was her world, in a frozen baptism that ached with silent stagnation. And she would walk. Sixteen blocks she'd walk.

The world pulsed all around her in the intangible light of the predawn – a static, shifting glow that hovered about the lampposts (still cascading streams of orange across the streets so black and still that they seemed ready to crack with tension) and the trees. And she was alone. She was alone within it all and she thought of headlights reflected in the snow – snow, which had grown black like tar and melted three days before, only to be followed by a bitter spell so frozen that it had cauterized the tear-ducts of the sky with ice, preventing any further secretions from escaping into the dried up husk of a world that was Midwestern America in the winter. Only now was it becoming warm again. Warm enough to snow. It was January and the wind tasted dry and stale as it often does when nature blends with culture.

Yet, here she was in suburbia, a land so genuinely confident in its own appearance, and the deeper internal reflection of this moreover, that it required no dry cement walls to divide and constrain the properly constructed, perfectly organized houses, merely allowing their backyards to sprawl into one another in a manner that society would rarely permit in the realm of human behavior. And here was her house – perfectly constrained, perfectly free. She'd hardly noticed the walk. Sixteen blocks.

And her key was in the door and a symphony awaited her. A symphony of half-gray bluish light and memories that never were. Her footsteps were loud on the carpet, loud in a way that no one could hear and she thought that she might make coffee. It would be nice to make coffee (delicious, nutty, earthy coffee – nothing like that infectious, anxiety-ridden mess from earlier) and sit there with her hands wrapped around the warm ceramic cup (eggshell, her mother had insisted on the eggshell tinted mugs – plain, nothing too flashy) and greet the dawn as if it were something beautiful, something sublime, and not just one more calculated, scientific motion that brought her noticeably closer to the moment in which she resigned herself to occupying one of those robotic, impersonal hospital beds that she so dutifully returned to everyday. She would watch the steam rise.

There was everything mathematical about making coffee. Six cups of water. Pour into the machine. Four tablespoons of ground coffee. Shake into the filter. The press of a silver button and a domestic red light snaps to life. Mathematical. Or perhaps just methodical. But beautiful? Certainly not. Certainly not sublime… Yet, in a way. Yet, in a way it was all she had. All she had to remind her of a night that was beautiful if not sublime. A night when she had made coffee instead of tea and the air rang thick with words never spoken. A year ago. Maybe more. Yes, it was summer then – a summer night that she still clung to the way a drowned man, who has not yet been informed that his last breath has long since passed, clings to the little spot of light hundreds of murky leagues above his head. The coffee began to percolate – hollow drops against the glass.

She could think about that night, oh Lord; she could dance with that night through the entire gray morning if she wanted to. It could entice her and ensnare her and seduce her and she would belong to it for as long as it wanted, until her pager buzzed her into the dull, gray world that was somehow less real than the purple memories through which she swam. Purple hope – the color of bruises and sin. The color of exhaustion and the bags under her eyes that would later be blotted out with foundation and espresso and the promise of memories to sink into once again.

The clouds broke briefly and the sunlight came through the window – shades of gold and orange and molten, molten bliss and she wanted it to be sublime. She wanted to touch it, to taste it, to mold it and have it be meaningful. But even as the light dashed itself upon the glass and split into a million screaming fragments and was the color of everything beautiful, she knew that she was still here. And only here. In goddamn southern Indiana. And what does that do for you? What does that ever do for you?

The coffee maker emitted a high-pitched wail and for a moment it seemed at one with the light. They complimented each other, twisting and turning about one another in a complicated mingling of abstract stimulation. And then it stopped. And Ann was alone in her kitchen as dawn broke and the smell of mediocre coffee permeated the air.


	4. All Those Months are Equally Cruel

**A/N:** Another experimental chunk on the ol' timeline that is this bizarre "story". Sorry kid folks (those of you who are putting up with me through all this), I'm basically using this story as a Petri dish of experimental writing. In fact, I'll take suggestions and requests if you've got them. Just out of curiosity, does anyone else out there ship April/Ann? In fact, is this even a real ship? I'm beginning to doubt. Anyhow, I think it'll take a more intense twist soon.

**Warnings:** Language. AUish. OOCish. Angsting out.

**Disclaimer:** First off, the title comes from the East River Pipe Song, "What Does T.S. Eliot Know about You?" Also, let's see, there are OC, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf references in this sucker (can you guess what I've been doing with my semester?) because fanfiction is where all art forms blend in unholy matrimony. Finally, I'm pretty sure the results of the experiment mentioned in here aren't real. That's what the interwebs told me at least, but it makes a damn good motif.

All Those Months are Equally Cruel

She didn't much care where she was as long as she was somewhere. And, hell, somewhere could be somewhere beautiful, or it could be the grimy bank of a river that ran a particularly unsavory shade of brown. She wasn't somewhere beautiful – she knew that – which left her with the other alternative. The riverbank was littered fruitfully with the refuse of the empty people who she passed every day on the street (their ghostly gray eyes and their ghostly gray suits). And it made her so goddamn sad.

They were at the bar tonight. Her coworkers, that was. From the government – if you could call it that. Shitty little operation that represented the most overlooked state in the union – Lord. And she wasn't there. She didn't want to be reminded of that "temporal manifestation of futility", as she fondly referred to her life. Working at that Hellhole and chasing after that boy. Her castoff. Ann's castoff, that was.

For a while there she had stopped going to the pit at night. It was too risky or too convenient. She had forced herself to stop and for most of the summer she had held true to this self-imposed dictation. But now summer was turning to fall. The weather held a hint of bitter desperation and the leaves were dying, their crumpled shells igniting and flaming up in that brilliant shade of orange. Burning. Burning.

They had done a test. Some scientists in some far off lab (further than the eye could see on the misty slopes of the snow-baked cliffs of scientific lore – that's how she liked to think about it, at least). They had done a test where they had presented some lab mice (lab rats? guinea pigs?) with the choice between opium and food. Every time, the mice went for the opium. Every time – until they starved to their untimely, drug-ridden deaths. She didn't know if it was true or not, but that's what she had heard. That's what they had told her. The schools. The system. Society. Somebody's blog. Who knew? But somehow she had heard it.

She had gone to the pit last night. Only for a little while. She had gone there and come back and slept better than she had all through July. All through August. Probably ever…if she allowed herself to be melodramatic about the matter. Anyhow, all it did was prove those imaginary scientists correct. The pleasure center or principle or whatever it was. All she knew was that, if she were a rat, she'd push that damn lever every time.

So she sat by that river. She sat by it while all her friends (friends?) were at that bar. And she was happy about it in a way. But not happy enough.

So she called up that boy. Her castoff. _Ann's _castoff, that was. She called him up and he answered in that voice. That dumb, dumb voice that made her think about a show that she used to watch.

"April?" Said Andy. Like a puppy dog – to be stereotypical about the matter.

"Andy. I'm by the river. Come. Now." Because why not? He would be at the bar. He would be at the bar with them. With her.

"Oh my God. Is everything okay?"

"Duh, why wouldn't it be okay? Bring –" Ann. "Crackers."

"Crackers…?"

"Yeah. And cheese. And wine, if you have any."

"I love cheese!"

"Of course you do."

"April, I lo – April, you're awesome."

Love. Shit. The sound of the bar in the background. Her voice. Somewhere in the pulse. The pulse of fire and ice and longing and desperation and – she was being melodramatic. The pulse of mediocre dance music and mediocre liquor. All that the Midwest had to offer. No, the _finest_ that the Midwest had to offer.

"Bring Ann if you want." Every time. The rats went for the opium. Every. Time.

"Ann?"

Until they starved to death.

"Yeah, I mean, if you want. I know she likes…cheese."

"Does she?"

"You ought to know. You dated her."

You dated her.

"Oh yeah. By the river, you said?" He wasn't confused; he just went with it. Or maybe he was always confused and that constructed the illusion of stability. Either way, she did not think he would question her. He would bring the crackers. He would bring the wine. He would forget the cheese. And Ann? Well, damned if she knew – she didn't know the boy that well after all.

"Just come."

"Be there soon! Right after I get the cheese."

Click. And. Dead space. White noise. Those other terms used to refer to the emptiness that is a lack of connection. No, a reminder of the connection that you, until this moment (this unwavering dead space white noise moment) pretended to have. Bring Ann. White noise. Opium.

The river was brown. And it wasn't supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be beautiful. Burning. Burning blue. But no, it was brown and filthy. Debris floated along it. Garbage that got caught in the mud and the dead brown branches, which reached out like fingers, like limbs, like fall in the heart of the season. Beer cans and diapers and other objects that symbolized the present moment with a dramatic essence of, what should she say – shattered…shattered something. Consciousness? Perhaps. But there wasn't enough here for grandeur in scenery or in language.

A bar in southern Indiana is bar in any other state. Only worse.

Time passes.

"April?" His voice came from far off. From out of the mist that she pretended was there. His figure was silhouetted against the dim Indiana lights and, while in an odd, pretend way, it was picturesque, it wasn't beautiful.

"No, your mom. Who else would it be?"

He was here. Her castoff. Ann's – yes, she had made it clear, even in her own mind. He was here and she tried to forget that she had called him.

"Mom? Oh, you were kidding. That's a relief." Andy sat down next to her. "I'm glad you called. You, and not my mom, that is." He placed a box of crackers and a bottle of Yellowtail down on the dirt next to her. It was the color of burning. The wine and the dirt. Neither was a good thing. He had forgotten the cheese. And he had forgotten –

"No Ann?" Her mind flickered through a series of images.

"Oh, shoot…I completely forgot. What with the wine and the crackers and everything."

"It's cool." It wasn't.

"I'm sorry." He was. Sincerely. Sincerely?

"Seriously, it's cool. I don't even know why I mentioned it." She did. The pit. Last night and. And. And nothing.

They sat in silence and it was all she could ask for. It was all she could ask for, so she had to ruin it. For a reason. For no reason. Because. Because she could.

"It's cold," she said. It wasn't.

"No it's not, silly." He called her bluff, but it wasn't intentional and that was a comfort in a way.

"Yeah, doofus, it is." She moved closer to him. Reflex? Or the pretense of reflex? Morphine is an opiate.

"If only it were summer." He said and he was wistful about it and she wasn't sure why.

She liked the fall. She liked the leaves. The burning. And the summer, well, that was far away. For all she knew it would never be summer again.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" She said.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"If only it were…April?"

"That's better."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What I meant was…April?"

"What?"

"Why did you tell me to invite Ann?" he asked. And she hadn't expected that from him. Maybe he hadn't either.

'Why not?" she countered and it wasn't really an answer.

"You hate her. I think. Or is that someone else? Leslie?"

"I hate them all…"

"Then why –?"

"Sometimes, Andy," she didn't pause, but she thought. She thought of warm lights and beautiful places and dying sunsets and, hell, she thought of opium. And sometimes you can talk about that shit. Sometimes, you really can. But you have to know when that is. And, if it was ever, it sure as hell wasn't now, "Sometimes you just have to shut the hell up, drink some wine, and maybe you'll have a night to remember."


	5. Less of a Fall

**A/N: **So I realize that it's grossly unfair that I don't update this story all summer, and then I go ahead and post what is essentially a 250 word drabble. I feel like half my life is spent wishing that I could be writing fanfiction and the other half is spent trying to get back into writing fanfiction. And that is basically what this is: me getting back into it…again. Sigh.

**Warnings: **Hark! A femslash! Way on the distant horizon!

**Disclaimer: **This was written while listening to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Sybris, and St. Vincent. So I suppose those could be considered influences.

Less of a Fall (More of a Force Diagram)

She fell in love quickly and painfully – like waking up to a buzzing pager and a raging hangover after two hours of sleep. It was sterile. It was necessary. It was taking a gulp of fresh air – only slightly tainted with chlorine – after a forced period of submerged stagnation.

_Like licking your lips._

It was calculated. It would last no less than a month. And no more than a year. She could track the trajectory if she so desired, but it didn't much interest her. A year. She mentally toasted herself. Imaginary glasses clinked (hollow and plastic) as they made contact with one another. Champagne (sticky and too sweet) bubbled over the edge and landed, fizzing, on the cheap IKEA table of her mind. A year to remember briefly, uncomfortably, and then push away until the next necessary duration came to pass.

_Like biting your nails._

It was a procedure, just like everything else in her meticulous, drill dictated life. Filling out paper work (inky lines and bleach-dyed, perfect sheets). Making coffee (caffeine with a touch of chemical flavor). Waking up (headaches and a relentless buzzer). She flipped open her phone. The buttons stuck with age and her own nervous sweat as she dialed the number. Buttons, plastic, even the electric current running through the device all seemed ridiculous. But then, so did the rest of the world.

_Like lighting up a cigarette._

"April?" she asked sharply (shooting a needle-thin projectile into an eternity of static).

"What," it was, curiously enough, not a question.

"We need to talk."

_It's just another habit._


	6. Sunlight and Other Beautiful Things

Sunlight and Other Beautiful Things

**A/N:** Well, I feel like this story is winding down. It's about nine months old at this point (I could have had a baby; instead I had a fic) and that's about as long as I can stay interested in something. So expect another chapter or two of denouement and then we'll wrap this sucker up and move on to another fandom.

**Warnings: **Angsty angst angst and some femslashyness.

**Disclaimer: **Influences include Belle & Sebastian and avoiding my real creative writing assignments.

I

"April?"

"What." It wasn't a question. It wasn't a question because of the well known fact that, at 3:00 in the morning – 3:02 to be exact – when your phone suddenly illuminates and the obscure, deeply depressing acoustic cover of the obscure, deeply depressing indie song that you picked for your ringtone shatters through whatever semblance of restful sleep you were attempting to maintain, you are physically unable to scrape together enough consciousness to produce any sort of verbal utterance other than a bland, monosyllabic response – questions included. And this is precisely the situation that April finds herself in at this very moment, which hangs in the uncertain mist between 3:02 and 3:03 in the morning.

"We need to talk."

These are the kind of words that are designed to wake a person up, to send a shiver of nerves and uncertainty into his – or her – stomach. Try as she might to resist the effects of such a carefully constructed phrase, April nevertheless finds that she is blinking into an uncomfortable form of awareness, an awareness which, when she gives the dutiful reply of, "What. Now?" allows her to place the slightest upward inflection on the second word. A question. She wishes that it had come out flat.

There was silence on the other end of the line. April contemplates shutting off her phone and going back to sleep, untroubled. That would be the most characteristic course of action. But the seconds drag by, measured out on the digital display of her phone, and there she lies, unable to speak, or move, or really do anything other than expel breaths, heavy with sleep, into the receiver. And then, at last, Ann's voice reemerges as if from very far away: "No. I'm on call tonight. And it ought to be in person."

"Then when?" April is pleased that she is able to inject a small dose of annoyance into the remark that is, unfortunately, still a question.

"Tomorrow? Around five?"

"So, like, in two hours?" April has to be difficult. It was really all she has. Though now, after the last few months, it feels wrong somehow. It isn't her. It isn't really even all that fun.

"Five in the evening," she sounds defeated.

"Fine. But no promises. I have something important going on then. More important than you at least." Harsh. Cruel. Unnecessary? Perhaps. Untrue? She really can't tell anymore.

"Thanks." Click.

She'd go – tomorrow at five. She knows it and so does Ann. It feels like restarting a level in a video game that she has already played, but has never quite managed to beat. She wonders if she always loses. Or just gives up.

II

Fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes have passed since Ann hung up the phone. "Thanks," she had said, and the closing remark now seems, under the light of the fading sun, abbreviated and inadequate. Washed out. She hadn't been on call last night. She knows it and she'd be damned if April doesn't know it too. She'd be damned anyway though so she doesn't bother much about it. The words had just tumbled out of her mouth – at least, that's what she allows herself to think. It was dark at 3:02AM and she had needed light.

Or something more than that. Yes, she had needed something more than just light (cold and empty). She had needed words.

Words are comforting (warm and real). There are words for everything (words like flesh and melancholy). Everything that you see, hear and feel – there's a word for it all. Yet, in the end, there really isn't a word to describe anything. There isn't a word to fully encompass a moment – this or any. There isn't a word to describe why she got drunk in her house last night, taking shot after shot of plastic bottle vodka that smelled like petroleum as if it were _aqua vitae_. That's not to say that certain words and phrases don't jump into her mind, words like "pathetic" and "bottomless pit", but the second expression strikes a little too close to home. Literally.

She hadn't slept much last night, not after consuming the coffee that she made for herself around five in the morning to regain the feeling in her toes, to regain the grip on her life, on reality. (Her heart, beating, and time just ticking away, creating a metronome to it all.) And she had fallen in love (or something that could be mistaken for it). And she had made a phone call and now, now is the time to come to terms with it all. It is 4:59.

III

It's the way the dying sun looks on the icy sidewalk while she walks that makes her question what she's going to say when she gets to Ann's house. At some point she would have found it beautiful, but she couldn't place exactly when it would have been. Gold cracked and burnt. Beauty in the creation found in destruction. And she finds it now, somewhere in the back corner of her mind – the dusty one that is rarely explored. She finds it and it is an odd, uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. She knows what is going to happen. And she doesn't like it.

IV

Why did she call last night? She shouldn't have called,

There is a knock.

Oh, God.

V.

She knocks. The door opens and the scene commences:

"April."

Ann's greeting irks her somewhat. She knows her name. And this is just a reminder that she knows what she is doing here. She steps into the house without replying. Before the door closes, she glances out at the pit. The sun is sinking into it and for a moment she experiences the ridiculous fear that she will never see it again. She doesn't know if she's thinking of the sun or the pit.

"Would you like some coffee? I was just about to make some," asks Ann. Nervously.

The shard of irritation digs deeper into April's frontal lobe and she runs her fingers through her hair as if to pry it out. Formalities are ridiculous. Every second wasted on them is a second that you could have spent dying by some other means.

"No," she responds shortly and even she is surprised by it.

"Oh."

There is a silence and April allows it to expand, to consume them both in a haze of awkwardness and potential regret before she clarifies, "I want to know why I'm here." This is, of course, an absurd question. It is a common thought that, at some point along this ridiculous, illusory journey from point A to point B, every human will ask this question. The reality, however, is that few ever do. April wishes that the words had never passed her lips. The fact that they entered her thoughts is bad enough.

"Well, I just wanted to discuss…" Ann begins. Cruelly formal.

"Why you found me drunk in the snow, why I asked Andy to bring you with him to the river, why I sit outside your pit at night like a love-struck teenager? Yeah, I know." The words are calculated and practiced, like a recitation, and she wonders if they mean as much to Ann as they do to her.

Ann fidgets uncomfortably and April suddenly becomes painfully aware of the fact that she exists in an ever shifting world. She wishes personal relationships and emotions and all things that existed in the impossibly near, uncomfortable realm of "adult" were stagnate. She wishes they would all die. It is a juvenile thought, but it is familiar and she relishes it.

"It would be easier if you accepted the coffee." Ann isn't looking at her and April gets the sense that has just been engaged in some sort of power struggle. At a different time, a time when an icy sidewalk presented itself as the epitome of beauty perhaps, April would have played this game. She would have fought back. And she would have won. But right now she is just too damn tired.

"Fine, make the coffee."

Ann does. She makes the coffee. The same way she always makes the coffee. And she prays (or hopes, in this secular world) for different results. Insanity.

They remain silent while the coffee is percolating, a steady drip, the ticking of a clock – time, which is only an illusion to an immortal creature. It beeps and neither of them wants it to. The table is so hard and they've been staring at each other with calculating looks.

But it beeps and Ann looks at April and she asks, "Cream?" She asks, "Would you like cream?"

And April responds, "No, I take it black," and she feels like Ann should know this. She wonders why she doesn't.

And she's sitting there, she's just sitting there with a cup of black coffee steaming in front of her, and it all just feels so repetitive, just so painfully monotonous that when Ann opens her mouth to speak, the air of importance and confession clinging to her lips, April lurches forward abruptly and kisses her. It's what they both wanted after all, isn't it? It's what everyone wanted. It's what her grand speech was leading up to. She'd say that she was in love or in lust or that April was too young to get it, to comprehend the basic drives that dictate the lives of each and every one of us, but it would all come down to the same thing – whether or not the night ended in action. And April was just so damn sick of inaction.

So she kisses Ann. And there aren't fireworks or anything. It doesn't feel "right". It just is – lips damp with coffee meeting lips primed for confession and a dull spark of humanity between the two.

April pulls away, but she isn't smiling. "Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

"Yeah, that about sums it up," Ann responds, and she is smiling. And she really shouldn't be.

April kisses her again and it's far easier than it should be to push away the emotion that she imagines is bubbling to the surface.


	7. And When We Break

**A/N:** Well, this is it: the last chapter. While nothing is ever truly finished and I may come back to this one day if the inspiration hits me, for now I'm calling it a day on this story. I'm more or less pleased with how it turned out, though it did seem to transform into something odd and interesting by the end (and entirely AU). Thanks a ton to all of you who read and reviewed! This is not a hugely popular pairing (though I love it to death) and so I'm incredibly grateful to everyone that decided to take a look at it.

**Disclaimer: **The title, again, comes from the song "Two-Headed Boy Part 2" by Neutral Milk Hotel. Influences include Neutral Milk Hotel, Bright Eyes, and Virginia Woolf. Also, I feel like the fact that I'm taking Intro to Astronomy this semester played a part in this chapter so I'll just go ahead and mention it here…

And When We Break, We'll Wait for Our Miracle

April runs. She runs like hell and she hopes that Ann will follow, but she knows that she won't. She knows that she is alone with the stars now. That they both are. Alone with cosmic creations of flaming dust – beautiful nothings that will soon cease to be even that.

She runs until she finds herself confronted with the hills and the trees and the forests and everything that once was in a land called southern Indiana. And she wishes to God or Hell that Ann will call her name. That the word, "April", will crash through the dark and any imitation of mystery and terror that still exists in this land between inexperience and boredom, but it doesn't. And it won't. There is only fall leading to winter.

So she keeps running, because it's all she has. She has something called youth and something called potential and she can still open herself up to the stars without feeling completely ridiculous and so that's what she does.

The asphalt disappears beneath her feet and the grid of orange streetlights and civilization falls away and she doesn't know where she is, that is, she can't name it, but it isn't unique. It is a place where everyone finds themselves, but doesn't dare admit it in the conscious hours. It is a place of hope and imagination and surrender. It is the mind and it is nature and it is the belief that the word "April" will still come shattering through the dark, rent from the voice of someone you never thought to love and could never fully give yourself to. It is a mountain frozen with snow and brown, dried grass shuttering softly in a southern wind, and it is something called memory.

...

She was sitting on her desk that first afternoon, cross-legged, filing her nails. That's how Ann remembers her at least – a sardonic smile on her lips and not a care about Heaven or Hell. And that was something. It had to be. In a society of structure, any semblance of chaos was bliss.

She looked at April that first day, a figure sitting solid and defiant against the culture of the age. She was the fall and everything else fell away.

We are beautiful, drunk, crawling creatures.

It was later that night when she found the courage to stray out on the patio where she found April, still sitting, still cross-legged, her arms wrapped around her legs, smoking a cigarette. And it was then that she knew the world.

"I –" she began without any intention of completing the thought.

"We shouldn't talk," April cut her off. (The constellations hung above them.) "It will only ruin things."

There was a pause.

"It will only ruin everything."

They were there. They didn't quite sit and they didn't quite stand; they just existed in a way that it wasn't quite human. And smoke escaped from April's lips and it was fire and flesh and Ann could do nothing but stare and be.

"I'm not a smoker," April said.

"I know," Ann said.

And April went inside. It was a month later that she started going to the pit. And it was eight months later that she kissed Ann and felt nothing.

...

April runs because at some point in everyone's life they must run. They must feel the ground below them and she sky above them and nothingness around them and wonder the terrible and wonderful question of whether or not something is out there, if someone or something is watching them, waiting to guide them to a place (golden with the glow of an afternoon that falls with purpose when one only want to rest) beyond everything – a place safe and clean. A place beyond it all. But she feels nothing and she hears no call of "April" and so she keeps running with the purple sky above her, pierced with cloudy veins of orange and blue and transience until she cannot run anymore. There is nothing more. There is this and the streetlights and the stars.

So she stands there, her feet straddling asphalt and earth, hovering on the border between civilization and whatever else there is. Above her the sky is transitioning into the icy blue of a spring morning that has yet to break and around her, trees transfixed with the illusion of stagnation quiver and cling to the flavors of rebirth and redemption.

In the distance to her left, a lone string of highway penetrates through the blackness of the land, seeking the morning. A solitary set of lights traverses it, heading to Montana or oblivion or somewhere else entirely. And somewhere, jazz plays on a radio and coffeemaker beeps in accordance with it. Glass doors slide noiselessly on their tracks. The world hovers as a crystalline sphere, waiting with bated breath to be smudged or shattered. It is morning but there is no sunlight.

And she realizes in that moment that we are beautiful in our own crawling, begging, organic way. We are beautiful in the way that we listen to music, and create, and look at the sky. We are a part of this world and that is beautiful. We are orange, flaming leaves, burning up with the pain of our own existence and that is beautiful. We are language – black lines streaming across a page – and we are music – vibrations pounding through mechanics – and this is the only moment that we can live. We are highways in the dusk.


End file.
